By Charlie Leffler

From the inception of Conference USA, bowl connections have been dubious to say the least. First, the Humanitarian Bowl, which played in Idaho in December, proved to be anything but humane. In addition, there was the Motor City Bowl, which invited teams and their fans to Detroit, whose claim could be, “We’re no longer the murder capital of the world.” But being the new kid on the block, C-USA had to start somewhere.

Then, much to no one’s chagrin, the Humanitarian Bowl severed connections with the conference. This past winter, the Motor City Bowl did likewise. And while C-USA hated losing the bowl games, there was also a feeling that it was hard to decide whether it had been a reward or punishment to send teams to the two locations.

But my, how things have changed. The conference still held its connection to the GMAC and the AXA Liberty Bowl, and they were enlightened by the news that the worst named bowl in the country, the galleryfurniture.com Bowl was changing its name to the Houston Bowl. To make things better, two more bowls signed into the mix. Conference USA will go into this post-season with connections to five bowl games. Now, with the New Orleans and Hawaii Bowls in the future, players as well as fans have locations to look forward to reaching. Still, with bowl games popping up faster than SEC violations, the question is: Are there too many bowls? Most players and coaches do not believe so.

“The more rewards you can give kids, the better,” Louisville head coach John L. Smith agreed. “The more bowl games you get, the better it is.”

“You always like to see kids being rewarded for a winning season,” said Southern Miss head coach Jeff Bower. “The players want an opportunity to play that extra bowl game, and I’m for creating as many opportunities as you can.”However, USM running back Derrick Nix thought that perhaps things have gotten a little out of hand. “Realistically, they might be getting a little bit too many. They’re supposed to be like a reward.” Nix believes the more bowl games that there are, the less important that reward seems in the long run.

“I think it’s becoming saturated,” said TCU head coach Gary Patterson. “They’re talking about having a bowl game in Fort Worth now. It’s one of those situations where there’s a dollar to be made out there and people want to be able to do that.”

“There’s too many bowl games,” Dewayne White concluded. The Louisville defensive end feels that the vast number of bowls demeans the top teams who make it. “It’s all about money. It’s like, ‘Hey, we can make this money, let’s get another bowl game.'”

White is also discouraged by the fact that with so many bowl games, the eventual national champion is still disputed. “You might as well have a playoff. That’s 30 games. How do you get 60 teams and it ain’t going to determine who’s champ? That’s way too many. For each one of those games, you could have a playoff and determine who the real college football champion is.”

One C-USA team that looks to benefit the most from the additional bowls is UAB. Despite winning records and finishing near the top of the conference the last two years, the Blazers have yet to be invited to post season play.

“When the Motor City Bowl fell out, it helped us,” said UAB head coach Watson Brown. “They weren’t going to take the deep south teams.” The Detroit Bowl knew that a southern team would have a low fan turnout. “The Liberty Bowl, you’ve got to win it to go. That’s a cut and dry deal. So really, we had two bowl slots that we could fall into: Houston or the GMAC. Now we’ve got two more that we can fall into. We’re two and half, three hours from New Orleans, they know that already, and I don’t think Hawaii cares. They’re not trying to pick one who’ll bring the most people.”

With Louisville having made the trip to the Liberty Bowl in back to back years, rumors have now arisen about rotating which bowl the Conference USA Champion goes to.

“Louisville’s won twice in a row; I’m sure they kinda get sick of going to Memphis,” said Cincinnati quarterback Gino Guidugli. “Let them go to Houston or let them go to Mobile, just let them experience new places, that’s what the bowl thing is all about.”

While players and coaches would both like to see the game rotated, they also offer several reasons the champ should still travel to Memphis. “It would be a good idea if the monetary payout you get from the others would match the Liberty Bowl,” said Smith. “The reason you’re not going to do that, I guess, is just because monetarily, it’s crazy for you not to come here.”

To Brown, loyalty is important. “The Liberty Bowl stuck its neck out for us, and we owe them. They could have put an SEC team in there instead of the conference champions of Conference USA. They didn’t do that, and I think our conference champion needs to go the Liberty Bowl,” he said.

And while thoughts of traveling to Hawaii bring a smile to most player’s eyes, others don’t care where they travel as long as they are going to post season play. “We don’t look at the bowl game or where it’s at, we’re just happy to go,” said TCU wide receiver LaTarence Dunbar. “It could be in the middle of Arizona in the summer and we’d be there.”

“A bowl is a bowl, a championship is a championship,” said Memphis defensive end Tony Brown. “Whoever is in there, they probably wouldn’t care if they played it in a gym.”